| hans kalliwoda on Wed, 19 Dec 2012 09:22:48 +0100 (CET) |
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| [Nettime-nl] newsletter of the World in a Shell |
Message from the artist: First some good news.WiaS being a practice-based artistic research has been chosen by the Australian organisation ‘Project Anywhere’ for hosting within their 2013 program.
We initiated a board of advisors that consists so far of Charles Esche, Director of the VanAbbe museum and Jan Pronk, former minister of Development Cooperation for the Netherlands, who at this function initialized and acquired the one and only piece of ground that officially belonging to the San people in Botswana.
After one-and-a-half-year of not letting loose we finally received the UNESCO patronage from the Director-General in Paris for the WiaS project in Botswana. A tremendous amount of work was delivered behind the scene to make it come through. Although this delay has caused several consequences including the fading away of our resources that are scarce in these times anyway.
One of these consequences is the loss of storage location where the project is accommodated that is at the Hallen in Amsterdam West, a monument that has previously been used for the reparation of Trams.
The former caretaker Grontmij provided this storage location to us, via the Amsterdam/West city council, about three years ago.
A fortnight ago we learned that the development cooperation had finally found the necessary funds to rebuild the Hallen in a sustainable way in becoming a centre for media, culture, fashion and craftsmanship. The development organisation ‘Tron’ states in their vision that they aim ‘to create responsible thinking, working, construction and operation to produce a lasting stable growing social and economic value, with non-commercial aims’.
We contacted the responsible architect office André van Stigt to request a meeting to talk about the possibilities for solution to temporary store the project. We got however told that the project had to leave immediately and if not we had to bear the consequences that can, for insurance reasons by the building companies Strukton/DeNijs, ultimately lead to the destruction of the project.
On top of all this, rumours have been spread by a commercial organisation called AdHoc, that we have been illegally squatting the place and are therefore criminals to an extent that some people at the Amsterdam/West city council, who already offered an alternative solution, also turned against us.
WiaS ideas and technology is more then 20 years ahead of its time and has been praised by many knowledgeable people in the field like Ole Bouman form the Netherlands Architecture office and Rob Docter, General Director of the Berlage Institute.
The world's most compact and powerful mini-grid system fuelled by renewable energy, where about 50 man-years of labour by highly intelligent people have been invested into it, spending of about 1.3 million euro would be misspent and is about to go down the drain.
We think it is a total waste of energy, money and a ruin of resources and therefore we pledge to help to change this tide around by supporting us with contacting the Amsterdam/West city council and to help with financing the transport to a new location. Dirk de Jager [email protected]
There is rather little time left since this all is happening right at the moment. If you sympathise with the World in a Shell please consider supporting the next move by adding little that could mean a lot. Very much appreciated!
Hans The Blindpainters Foundation Post Box 1136 1000 BC Amsterdam The Netherlands +31 20 419 49 49 [email protected] http://www.worldinashell.net http://www.blindpainters.org/worldinashell facebook: The World in a Shell x ______________________________________________________ * Verspreid via nettime-nl. Commercieel gebruik niet * toegestaan zonder toestemming. <nettime-nl> is een * open en ongemodereerde mailinglist over net-kritiek. * Meer info, archief & anderstalige edities: * http://www.nettime.org/. * Contact: Menno Grootveld ([email protected]).